New Album “Very Important” to Jeff Beck

For much of Jeff Beck's career, recording has often appeared to take a lower priority than, say, working on vintage cars. However, he admits that his upcoming record -- his first since 2010's 'Emotion & Commotion' -- is "a very important album for me."

“I’ve worked, worked, worked for the last three years," he told Rolling Stone. "Now is the time really. My [70th] birthday is coming up [in June], if you get me. I thought it was time for a really, really good studio album I had control over and time to do properly instead of a budget problem. Even though I do have budget problems!”

Beck is hoping to have the album, currently in the process of "mixing, overdubbing and aligning stuff – all the crap you have to do with ProTools," out by the time his world tour begins on April 4 in Tokyo. He also cut some sessions with Brian Wilson before they toured together last year. The status of that project remains up in the air, which confounds Beck.

"As far as I know, they made a mistake by grabbing me for a tour and opening up the floodgates for a tour prematurely instead of finishing the tracks," he continued. "And so we left the studio with half-finished tracks – three, four tracks I was supposed to be on and they’re still unfinished. And to me it was a bit stupid because they should have done the album, had a killer album, and then gone out on the road. But I think they wanted to grab me while I was still available. That’s about it.”

And while the concept of Wilson-Beck collaboration still seems like a mismatch, he admits that a tour with Jimmy Page, with whom he played in the Yardbirds for a few months in 1966, would be ideal, provided Page could be pinned down for long enough to do it

"He appears at the most unlikely events and then disappears again," Beck continued. "He’s a dark horse, there’s no doubt. He’s got a completely private side to him as I have. But we have such a great laugh when we’re together and if he ever comes up for grabs, then it’d make a good package. But one wonders what he’d play. What would he play? I don’t know. He’d have to have the music sorted out and then we’d work."